A/N: I'm quiet eager for some of the more recent chapters. Probably because a lot of this was written months to half a year ago when the story started. It was all based around the older (Very old) writing. I'm just glad to get it out of the way. ^^ Anyway, time for some answers... But then more questions! It's never ending~! But we're about to get some rhythm going here soon. Let's kick it into gear with this story! Don't give up on me yet!

-Misty

Song of the day (I really am running out of these): Coma

By: B.A.P.

The Change You Wish to See

(Original summary, but screw the stupid character limits) Levi's never put much care into things. He doesn't put much care into things at all. Nothing ever peaks his interest. Well, that's until he meets Eren Jaeger. Levi isn't sure what it is that's so interesting about him, and it irritates him to feel these feelings he's never felt before. Regardless, he goes to talk to the boy. When he doesn't receive an answer, he just thinks that the boy is rude; however, he understands why when Eren doesn't answer him. Eren is deaf.

Rated M for sexual content, adult language, some violence, mild character death
Main pairing: Riren with some side pairs
Anime: Shingeki No Kyojin (Attack on Titan)

Chapter Twenty One: Hospitalized

Levi hated hospitals. He always had. He'd spent way too much time in them during his years in college, and being here now brought up bad memories. It made his stomach twist with knots and roll like he was going to vomit. For a while he really thought he was going to, but he was surprised he hadn't.

They'd brought Eren in twenty minutes ago. They'd taken him into a room for something, but he hadn't caught what it was. Levi really hadn't been paying attention to what the doctors were saying. If they weren't saying he was okay, then everything else just wasn't important.

He had called his siblings after he'd lost sight of Eren. Armin sounded panicked, but he was good at keeping himself relatively calm in this situation. Apparently Mikasa was still sleeping, but Levi didn't stay on the line long enough to hear her reactions to the news. He'd hung up with a short goodbye after Armin said they would be there soon, and that was it.

So now here he was. Sitting on a bench in a hospital hallway all alone. No clues or ideas as to what was wrong with Eren. Feeling utterly hopeless.

He hated this. He really did.

"Levi...!" Levi's head darted up at the sound of that all too familiar voice. He looked over to the entry way, seeing Armin and Mikasa running in. It seemed Armin had noticed him first, leaving a frazzled Mikasa to just follow along. The poor thing wasn't even out of her pajamas yet, the light make up from yesterday running under her eyes and her hair in tangles. She looked like a mess, but that was to be understood.

"Hey..." Levi pushed himself up onto his legs, his injured one now hurting once more after the strain of this morning. He leaned himself against the wall as the two made their way over to him, ready to fill them in on what was happening.

Of course he didn't have much to say. All he could say was that he woke up and Eren didn't, but he didn't get the chance.

Levi had dealt with his fair share of fights in the past, but not once had he ever been punched in the face by a girl that felt like the force of another car hitting him. It wasn't a very light punch either, sending him onto his ass on the floor with what he could instantly recognize as a bloody nose.

"You bastard!" He vaguely heard the teenager scream at him before Armin was there to save the day.

"Mikasa! Stop it!"

Levi sat himself up quickly and pushed himself back in case the girl lashed out again, but he saw the blonde holding her back. It didn't stop Mikasa from trying, however. She was a rage not to be messed with, and if Levi thought she had been angry before, he hadn't seen anything yet.

"What did you do to him? You fucker! I'll kill you!"

"Stop it, Mikasa! You're going to get arrested!" Armin reminded her as he pulled her away from the older man still sitting on his butt.

"I hope you rot in hell, you pedophile!" Mikasa continued to yell with little disregard to what Armin was saying. It wasn't until a doctor suddenly came out of the room Eren was in that the situation seemed to diffuse, and it was only because he really could call the authorities on her.

"What is going on out here?" He asked in a booming voice that had the two teenagers recoiling.

"W-We're sorry." Armin apologized for her. "There was just a misunderstanding."

"A misunderstanding doesn't make up for the amount of yelling and violence going on out here." The man reprimanded them. Armin seemed to be taking the punishment for her, but the man standing in front of them was no wuss puss. He made the connection quickly enough when he saw the blood on Mikasa's knuckles that matched the blood dripping down Levi's face. "Clean yourselves up. You're in a hospital."

"Yes sir..." Mikasa uttered in obedience. Levi stood up, albeit woozy from the sudden loss of blood. He had nothing besides his hand to cover his nose, but within seconds, a nurse who had overheard and seen the fight came over with some towels for him to blot his nose with.

"We're terribly sorry, sir. We're just worried about our brother." Armin told the man as the two of them went about cleaning themselves up, like the doctor told them to do.

"Your Eren's doctor, right?" Levi asked, his voice strained from the blood trying to make its way down his throat. "Is his okay?"

"He's fine." The man assured them.

"What happened then?" Levi asked. "What the fuck happened to him?"

"Well when he woke up, Eren had no recollection of what happened. He's got all the obvious signs of a seizure."

"A seizure?"

"Yes. He's still in a bit of a Postictal state, but otherwise he's fine."

"What's that?" Armin asked.

"It's kind of like being in shock. He can hear you, or in his case understand you, and can respond with a shake or nod of the head, but he can't speak, and he's not going to remember it in ten minutes when he really wakes up." The doctor explained.

"So he's going to be okay then?" Levi questioned him quickly. "I mean, what about the blood in his mouth?"

"When someone has a seizure, it's not a surprise when all of the muscles are reacting at once. The tongue is one of them, and unfortunately his tongue got stuck in between his teeth. It was only a small bite though. He should consider himself lucky he didn't bite it off like other people do."

"Why didn't he wake up when I shook him then?"

"There's some time in between a seizure and waking up where a person won't really respond. My guess is that it happened while he was sleeping and his body just kept on sleeping. It's not an uncommon thing."

Levi sighed heavily.

So it was only a seizure. The blood in his mouth had only been him biting at his own tongue, and the doctor was right. He was lucky he didn't bite it off, because Levi had heard horror stories like that. He had heard others where people put their fingers into someone's mouth to keep them from biting at their own tongue, but then they end up losing their fingers in the process.

He was lucky, and Eren was going to be okay. That was all he needed to know.

"Thank God…" He whispered to himself.

"You're Eren's family, correct?" The man asked, but he was obviously skeptical. Mikasa and Armin looked nothing like him.

"Yeah," Armin said. "At least she is. I'm just a family friend."

"I'd like to ask you a question, if you don't mind?" The doctor inquired, to which the two teen's looked at each other and equally agreed. "While looking over his injuries, I noticed Eren's got a chunk of his tongue missing near the right side of his mouth. Has he had a seizure before?"

"Yeah, when he was ten." Mikasa informed him.

"He has?" Levi questioned in surprise.

"Yeah, but the doctors said it was just stressed induced. Eren was going through a lot back then, so it made sense." Armin told him. "That's why he's missing it."

Levi mentally questioned how he could have possibly missed that little fact about Eren. He'd only had his tongue shoved down his throat for half of the night.

"Had Eren been tested for Epilepsy when he was younger?" The doctor asked.

"Yeah, but they said he was fine." Mikasa mumbled.

"So then why did he have one now…?" Armin quietly questioned.

It was a good question indeed. If the first seizure was induced by stress, what had caused this one? Eren was losing his job, sure, but that couldn't put too much pressure on him, could it?

No, the first one was around the time Eren had lost his mother. He never talked about what happened after that, not until he'd turned fifteen. Something had happened, something bad. Something that was enough pressure to send the body reeling out of control.

So what had happened?

"I'd like to send Eren down for an MRI and EEG. I just want to be sure everything's working okay." The doctor explained to them.

"I-I don't want to sound selfish, but we don't have any insurance. How much is that going to cost?" Mikasa asked with a deep frown.

"It's going to be a few thousand." The doctor admitted, knowing how hard that was to hear as a teenager.

"Shit…" She cursed.

"We're going to have to pull money from savings, aren't we?" Armin asked.

"We've got no other choice." Mikasa shrugged her shoulders. "So much for vacation."

"You guys were planning a vacation?" Levi piped up.

"We were, but… Well, we wanted to surprise Eren for his twentieth birthday by getting tickets out of the country. We thought it'd be a great gift, but it looks like that'll have to be put on hold for a bit." The blonde weakly stated.

"Eren's health comes first. Money is money and it'll be there tomorrow. We just have to wait a bit longer."

Levi hated to hear them talking like this. They were nineteen after all. No nineteen year old should be concerning themselves with this kind of trouble, but they had no other choice.

"You're right." Levi said and pulled back the bloody paper towels. His nose had finally stopped bleeding, but that didn't mean he hadn't been left dizzy. "Eren's health comes first. The gesture is still there though, and you can surprise him on another day. It might just not be as soon."

He didn't want to be the bearer of bad news, but he had no other choice. A vacation could and would come, even if he had to pay for it himself. It would just be later. Life was what happened when one was busy making other plans, and unfortunately for them, life wanted to remind them that it was still around.

Eren was still around too. He was still there and alive, and that was all he could ask for.

"… You said Eren is awake?" Armin asked quite suddenly, obviously diverting the attention from the slowly growing tension.

"More or less. He's probably still a little out of it, but you can go see him." The doctor told them.

Without another confirmation, the three of them walked into the room the man had come from.

Yeah, Levi really hated hospitals for this exact reason.

He hated seeing Eren in a hospital bed, an IV in his arm and looking as pale as death. He hated seeing this fogged over look in his normally brilliant green eyes, and he hated how sick Eren looked.

He really hated hospitals.

"Eren," Armin spoke softly as the three of them walked up to his bed. Eren's hazy eyes looked over to them, seemingly confused by them and their surroundings as he tried to put two and two together. He opened his mouth to speak, but motor function didn't seem to be a thing that had returned to him just yet.

"Hi, Eren…" Mikasa said and signed as she sat down on the left hand side of his bed. Armin stood beside her, a weak smile on his face.

"Hi…" His fingers signed for him.

"How are you feeling?" Armin asked him.

"Really sore… What's going on?" Eren must not have remembered that what had happened had already been told to him. He must have been fully awake by now.

"Eren… You had a seizure in your sleep." Mikasa admitted to him like she was at fault and placed a hand over his forehead. She could feel just the lightest bit of sweat on his clammy skin, her lips pulling into a terrible frown at the feeling of it.

"I did…?"

"Yeah, but you're okay." She assured him. "The doctor said he wants to give you a couple of tests to make sure everything is okay in that empty head of yours, but he said you're fine nonetheless." She tried to joke, but it wasn't easy.

Something told Levi that she wasn't a fan of hospitals either.

"Can we afford that?" Eren asked, a sigh leaving him. Mikasa and Armin shared a similar look, as if quietly making out the answer between themselves before Armin spoke for her.

"We can handle it." His fingers hesitated.

"Don't even worry about that, Eren. Let's worry about the hospital food first." His sister rubbed at his arm, ignoring the frown that formed on his face. That was probably his only way of disagreeing with the idea.

"Levi…" Eren signed when his eyes caught the older man's gaze from across the room. Levi hadn't been paying much attention to their conversation. He'd only been looking at the brunette, eyes looking over his seemingly fragile form and assuring himself that he was alive and safe. He was okay, and yet he couldn't shake this terrible feeling in his stomach. It was a terrible feeling that just wouldn't go away.

However, when he saw Eren sign his name, his thoughts and worries seemed to vanish. They were replaced with him, only him, and that was all he needed.

"Hey brat…" Levi signed and did his best to disguise the limp in his leg. He hobbled his way slowly over to the bed and sat on the edge, mindful of his leg, so he could kiss Eren's forehead.

No, he didn't care that Mikasa and Armin saw this. She'd already hit him once today, so he was feeling a bit positive that she wouldn't do it again.

"Levy…" Eren managed to croak.

"Don't talk. Just relax, okay…?"

"I feel like I have cotton in my mouth…" Eren signed and frowned.

"You probably do. You bit your tongue while you were out of it." Armin pointed out.

"Again…? Am I missing another piece?"

"No, you're good." Levi told him and leaned against him.

Curiosity seemed to be getting the better of him lately. He couldn't stop wondering what it looked like now. Was it a very obvious space missing from his tongue, or was it not that noticeable?

His curiosity was going to get him killed. It really was.

Eren poked a finger into his mouth and pulled, finding the piece of cotton he'd noticed sticking to the end of his finger. It wasn't very bloody, though he figured he'd bled enough before this. If it was anything like last time, he'd probably bled across town on the way to the hospital, but that was last time. It didn't seem to hurt as much this time, but he wasn't too sure if that was the injury or the medication.

Mikasa huffed before flicking Eren's forehead.

"Ouch," Eren whined and pressed his hand into his head, feeling the sting from the simple flick.

"You're grounded for making me worry like that," She signed to him, her face morphing to one of displeasure.

"For how long?" Eren asked.

"An eternity." She answered.

"Wow, my longest sentencing yet." Eren smiled bitterly as he leaned into Levi's shoulder, feeling the warmth of his body through his sweater.

"We're about to be jobless soon. You can spend some of that time with me." Levi said while his fingers worked to keep up with his words. He acted like he didn't hear the way Mikasa clicked her tongue, but it wasn't easy.

"I'm about to be jobless. You still have a shot at something." Eren retorted, but he sighed heavily. He knew it was true, but he didn't feel the need to start up a conversation that didn't need to be there.

Levi seemed to notice his take on the idea as well. He knew it was a slip of the tongue, or rather, his fingers, but he also knew that Eren didn't mean to start anything with it.

"Speaking of jobs…" He mumbled to himself before looking over to Armin. "Armin, isn't your interview with Erwin soon?" He asked.

Armin seemed a little confused by the statement, but after a few seconds of letting the information process in his head, his eyes widened. He frantically pulled his phone from his pocket, looking for the time to see how much time he had between his interview and now.

It wasn't good.

"Crap! My interview is in fifteen minutes!"

"I'll drive you," Mikasa told him and stood up.

"I-I'm not ready though! I haven't showered, brushed my teeth, or even eaten-!"

"Armin, calm down." Levi said and lifted a hand. "Give me your phone and I'll give you Erwin's number. Just call him and tell him the situation. He'll understand."

"A-Are you sure?" Armin asked, obviously very upset by this.

"Of course. Shit happens and he knows it. He's not the type of person to get mad about something like this. Just explain everything to him and you'll be fine." Levi quickly dialed Erwin's number into his phone, not sparing a moment to hit the call button before handing it back to him. Armin nodded his head in a panicked way before walking out of the room to take the call.

That just left Levi with Mikasa and Eren.

"Levy…" Eren mumbled softly. Levi looked down to him to question him, but he had a very odd look in his eyes that had his previous question dying on his tongue.

"Hm…?" Levi questioned, knowing Eren would feel it.

"Why do you have blood on your lip?" Eren asked and raised his hand to touch it. Levi pulled his head back to avoid him and lifted his hand up to wipe away the access blood now dried on his lips.

He'd forgotten what had happened before. He had forgotten about his bloody nose and who had caused it. He had also forgotten about the balled up paper towel in his hand still drenched in his blood. He'd been hiding it from Eren, but the moment he wiped at his lips, Eren caught sight of the red liquid staining his skin.

"Levy, what happened?" The brunette asked out loud. Levi looked over to Mikasa quickly, wondering if she was going to admit to her faults, but the teen looked away in guilt.

"I uh… Walked into a glass door on the way in. That glass is fucking spotless, you know? I thought the door was open and I didn't even see it." Levi lied as he looked for a trashcan to throw away the useless towel. Eren didn't seem to buy his lie for a moment, having noticed the odd exchange in stares between the two before he spoke. Eren looked over to his sister with a glare, but when she couldn't meet his eyes, he seemed to put two and two together.

"Mikasa, what did you do?" He asked with anger.

"… It was an accident." She uttered, her fingers barely moving.

"You hit him?"

"I told her to, Eren." Levi shook at Eren's free arm so he would get his attention before signing.

"What…?" The teen asked incredulously. "Why would you ask that of her?"

"Well… When you were out of it, I was a little freaked out. I asked her to hit me to see if that would wake me up, but… You sister hits harder than I excepted." Well, the last part was true. Mikasa hit far harder than he previously assumed.

He actually thought he'd prefer getting hit by the car than getting hit by her again.

"Nothing is broken though. It was just a little bloody nose." Levi assured him.

"But you shouldn't have done it." Eren reprimanded her when he looked her way. "He's already got enough problems with his leg."

"His leg…?" She asked.

"When he got hit by the car last night, it really messed his leg up."

"It's fine…" Levi groaned, but he didn't sign it. He was only mentioning it in passing for the girl.

"How is it today, Levi? Is it any better?" Eren asked with one of those looks that the older man could not pass up.

"It's fine. It's feeling much better today." Whatever it was in his expression or signing didn't seem to assure Eren correctly. Maybe Eren was really that good at reading people, because he still didn't believe it.

In that moment, Eren let his hand wander to his leg and pushed his fingers into it. Levi bent over in pain and hissed, his hand grabbing at the teen's wrist and pulling it away, but it was too late. The damage had been done, and Eren had figured out the truth all on his own.

"Mikasa, something was wrong with his leg yesterday, and it's gotten worse. Could you look at it?" Eren asked her.

"What do you mean look at it? She doesn't need to be looking anywhere down there." Levi growled, but his words fell on deaf ears from both parties. Mikasa left her side of the bed to walk up to the older man, who continuously glared at her. He was hoping she'd take the hint, but apparently that wasn't happening. "Don't you dare."

"If it's that bad someone needs to look at it." She said without a hint of concern in her voice. In fact, there wasn't much there in her tone besides a smidge of annoyance.

"Someone other than you-!" Mikasa grabbed at Levi's belt and pulled at the buckle before he could finish his sentence. The man instantly slapped her hands away, but before he could move from the bed, Eren grabbed at Levi's waist from behind and pulled him down onto the bed. "E-Eren!"

"Hold still!" Eren told him.

"Let me go!" Levi kicked out his leg to keep the girl from doing anything more, but this situation was out of control. Eren may have been complaining that he was sore, but he seemed fine enough to use all of this strength (Where did it even come from?) to hold him down.

"Uhm…"

The three of them suddenly stopped, and Eren only did it because the others did. The three of them seemed to grasp the situation quickly enough, all of them looking over to the doorway.

Of course Armin showed up at the wrong time. Of course he came in to this odd situation. Armin was still a very dangerous person after all. A dangerous person with a bad sense of timing.

"Tell them to fucking let me go!" Levi barked at him and kicked his leg again, but Mikasa grabbed it before he could do any harm.

"Armin, Eren said that he's got an injury on his leg. I'll hold him down if you look at it." Mikasa told him. Armin still seemed dazed by what he was seeing, but nonetheless he tucked his phone back into his pocket and walked back over to the bed.

"You can't be serious?" Levi asked in amazement.

"Where is it?" Armin questioned and signed to Eren.

"On his upper thigh." He answered and held tight.

"I'm seriously questioning my relationship with you right now." Levi growled back at Eren, but none of it was caught. Mikasa grabbed at both of Levi's legs and held them tight. Too tight. The older man growled once more and jerked his injured leg back some, at least enough to where she wasn't holding the inflicted areas.

"I can see where it is just by that." Armin said. His eyes were keen on picking up the subtle hints of pain from the man, and seeing his leg jerk back was enough to have his evidence.

"God fucking damn it…" Levi groaned and leaned his head back into Eren's shoulder, feeling Armin undo the belt of his pants and pull them down. The fabric brushed against the bruised skin in a way that had his skin crawling before the two teens both gasped in surprise. They weren't expecting to see the damage left behind, but they hadn't had a good grasp on the previous situation either.

Now they knew.

"Holy shit…" Mikasa mumbled. Eren looked past him to the injury, and he too was surprised. It hadn't looked like that last night. It was nowhere near as bad as it was right now. The bruise wasn't that long or dark, and the skin wasn't as risen as it was last night. It hadn't been the lighting either.

It had just gotten worse.

"Levy…!" Eren whined and released the older man. Levi sat up quickly and pulled his pants back up. He didn't even spare a glance at the three of them as he did up his belt.

"Levi, you need to have a doctor look at that." Armin told him.

"I'm fine."

"That's not fine, Levi! Something could be broken under there!" The blonde pointed out. "You need to get some x-rays or something, because something isn't right."

"I don't have the money for that, Arlert."

"And we don't have the money for this, but we can make it work." Armin retorted. "You have to for Eren's sake. Didn't you say so yourself that health comes first?"

"That was for Eren," Levi brushed off his own comment.

"And if you want to keep it for Eren, then go do something about that." The blonde said in a stern tone. Levi scoffed before limping away from the bed, shoving past him and Mikasa to get away.

"Fine. I'll do it." He growled and left the room. Eren was left utterly confused. He couldn't follow what they were saying by lip reading, and none of them had been signing. Whatever had been said had left him angry though. That was all he knew.

"Armin…?" Eren asked.

"It's alright. He's just going to have his leg looked at." Armin assured the brunette, but Eren didn't seem convinced. "A-Anyway, Erwin said he'd reschedule the interview." Armin was desperate to change the subject, moving it away from Levi and towards something different, something better and a little more relieving.

"That's good…" Eren muttered, his brows still furrowed in concern.

"He moved it to Wednesday. Since I have earlier classes, it works out for both of us." Armin continued on, sitting down on the edge of the bed in hopes that he could ease the tension to something else.

He didn't realize that it wasn't from Eren, however, but Mikasa. He'd been so worried about Eren and his well-being that he forgot Mikasa was still standing by, but she didn't say anything. She'd been too busy watching the older man leave in a huff.

She had heard from him yesterday about the car incident. She knew that the older man had gotten hit in Eren's place, but she didn't know how bad the damage was. From what he said, he made it out to be some simple little nick, but that wasn't the case at all. The injury to his leg looked extensive. It looked bad, like something really was broken, and what if it was?

Why had Levi gone so far to do that for her brother?